Free Software legal news

Read about ground-breaking decision of the Court of Justice of EU, AG's opinion in awaited European interoperability ruling, two software patent cases and much more.

Apple using patents to undermine open standards

Apply uses three registered patents and one patent application to threaten to block the W3C Standard.Seearticle at MyOpera;

Microsoft welcomes Free Software to Win8 store

Applications released under a license from the Open Source Initiative (e.g. GPL, Apache) are being now welcomed by Microsoft into the Windows 8 Windows Store. Seearticle at ExtremeTech and at The Register;

Motorola Mobility wins German patent suit against Apple

The Mannheim Regional Court rendered its ruling on one of the patent infringement lawsuits Motorola Mobility brought against Apple in Germany. The ruling includes an injunction that is preliminarily enforceable in exchange for a €100 million ($134 million) bond. Concerned patent relates to "method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system". Seearticle by FOSS Patents blog;

Koha creators asking for help in trademark dispute

Koha is a free library management system. This software has been the subject of an ongoing fight with a US company called LibLime; it seems that LibLime now thinks it is entitled to a trademark on the Koha name in New Zealand. Seearticle at LWN.net;

Censorship in Name of Copyright Violates Fundamental Rights

The Court ruled that forcing Internet service providers to monitor and censor their users' communications violated EU law, and in particular the right to freedom of communication. Seearticle by La Quadrature du Net;

Liberation by software

Power has long been able to control the media. But the free software movement enables a radically democratic future. Which way the network behaves is determined solely by the software that comprises it. Freedom of the press, freedom of information, freedom of thought itself are now "implemented" rather than "declared", "protected" or "guaranteed". Seearticle by Eben Moglen in the Guardian;

Creating New Property Rights on the Basis of General Legal Concepts

In two cases recently decided by two different senates of the German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH), the following issue was raised: To what extent can the filming of sports events organized by someone else, on the one hand, and the photographing of someone else’s physical property, on the other hand, be legally controlled by the organizer of the sports event and the owner of the property respectively? Seearticle by Prof. Dr. Thomas Dreier in the JIPITEC;

Advocate General favours interoperability in Europe

The Opinion of Advocate General Bot in SAS v World Programming, the case before the Court of Justice of European Union, has now been published. It seems to favour World Programming and interoperability. Seearticle at Technollama;

The United States Supreme Court will decide a case this term that could determine whether free software developers are liable for patent infringement by users of their software Seearticle at Software Freedom Law Center;